Every Authors Worst Nightmare, & How to Fix it
[image error] You've been sitting at your computer for days on end writing the next New York Times best-selling novel. Now up to 80,000 words, you are motoring right along until your computer freezes up, shuts down, and takes you through the rebooting process. After logging into Windows, you notice that you cannot seem to find your written masterpiece. Quizzically looking at your monitor, you contemplate slamming the entire fifth of Jim Beam you've kept onto all year for night caps because the pain of losing that work is overwhelming to the point of tears. However, my fearsome writing beast, you have many more options at your fingertips in recovering your possibly lost manuscript than you realize; below we'll touch on some first initial checkpoints for your data.
Locating Auto-Saved Data
First, before you decide to heave your laptop through the bay window, we'll check for the possibility of your word processing program leaving an automatically saved copy of your data; granted, it may lack a few thousand words yet it certainly fairs better than losing the whole shebang. In checking for this auto-save in Microsoft Word, a few different ideas can be incorporated depending on the version you have. If running Office 2010, simply open up Office, find the 'Recent' link on left, and view every document that was opened in the available window to your left. In the window to the right, you'll see folders you may have accessed or opened recently as well; check each folder in case you may have saved a copy in one of them and just forgot. Finally, as a last solution in Office 2010, there will be a link just below the split windows in the 'Recent' tab named 'Recover Unsaved Documents'; this link will take you to a folder on your hard drive where any open files – saved or not – that were created prior to the crash will be displayed; if you didn't name it, the name can sometimes default to the title or first few words in the document, so go through those documents to retrieve your lost manuscript which will, magically, be there. This is the good news; the below is some 50/50 news.
If you are using Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007, the process becomes a little bit tedious; we'll put this in bullet points below so you can minimize this article window and try it out. Below is the process to find out if you have an auto-save in older Microsoft Word, Open Office, or other word processing formats:
On your desktop, you'll see a 'My Computer' icon (also can be found in Start Menu) that is usually two computer screens mashed together. Click on it.
Next, you will see a list of hard drives, CD Rom's, and other connected storage devices. Click on Local Drive C: (or, some computers may list it as C: only)
Once clicked, you will be taken to a list of folders. You'll be looking for 'Program Files'. Once located, click on that folder. You'll be taken to a list of program files available on your computer.
You are now looking for Microsoft Office (or also Open Office or whichever word processing program you are using). Once the folder has been located, you'll click on it and get taken to the next set of subfolders for Microsoft Office.
Once inside the subfolders look for the Office Tools folder. After locating it, click on it and now you are finally inside the folder that contains an important program you'll run.
Now that you are in the final folder (for the moment), you'll want to click on Microsoft Office Application Recovery. This handy tool is now going to walk you through a process that will reveal every single instance when your Microsoft Word was opened and when and can retrieve an accidental window closing such as that which can occur during a sudden freeze or crash.
In Open Office, the item you'll want to look for (using the same method) is a document folder that may have a temporary saved document. If you cannot find the file, it was lost or never automatically saved.
These steps will recover your files if Microsoft or Open Office has them stored in folders. If you cannot find them using these methods, a freak accident occurred and it was purged from your hard drive on accident and, yes, that means it went to File Number 13 for good. The recover tool, unfortunately, will also not work if your hard drive was roasted during a power surge, otherwise called an 'electromagnetic surge', or if the hard drive was intentionally erased.
Prevent Losing Valuable Manuscripts
Again, as one that has lost several large works in my time, I now understand the value of making copies and saving often; in other words, trust technology loosely since it was a man-made system with human error not factored in very well. The precautionary measures below will prevent this issue from haunting you again in the future:
Get into a habit of saving your work every ten minutes. When saving, put a copy on a small 'jump drive', or, USB keychain drive (you can get these at Walmart or anywhere for under $15 for a 8GB, more than sufficient for several novels over 1,000,000 words). The drives come auto-formatted so you just need to plug it in and save your documents.
At the end of each day of writing, email a copy of the document to yourself after saving. This way, you have a remote copy you can access at the library to print or continue typing.
Get a good surge protector and don't plug too many other devices into it; just use it for a computer and perhaps a printer so the surge protector doesn't get overworked and cause your computer to act up.
If using a laptop, get a cooling pad to set your laptop on; the batteries get sizzling hot really quick and, over time, can cause internal problems since each laptop only has a small built-in fan. If you are using a desktop, keep the area relatively cool so the casing of your computer doesn't get any hotter than it already gets.
Run minimal programs while typing your work. Do you really need to listen to streaming radio online, talk on Facebook and shop while typing in your word processing program? Turn on a radio or television if you need some distraction to make your thoughts flow without hesitation as having too much of your computer's memory occupied doing other senseless deeds can cause freezing to occur and, yes, even crash your drive.
Avoid gambling sites, porn sites or downloads, hijacked programs sites or any type of adverse site; you'll contract a virus or some unwanted visitors from afar if you allow them to peek into your hard drive or have a crack at your internet connection.
Yes, it does stink that you lost a few years of typing all in one swipe and, inevitably, you'll have to attempt to get your writing back to what it was. After trying the aforementioned ideas to revive your document and failure occurs – and you feel optimistic that more can be done – pay that little bit of money to get a tech guru to dissect your computer and try to find it. Spending $100 on a guru to play MacGyver with your data is a lot better than sitting at your desk, beating your head on an oak surface or drinking yourself to a stupor.
